


Real Boy (The Got No Strings Remix)

by Wojelah



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 04:17:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2567930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wojelah/pseuds/Wojelah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Rory Williams was real, and he never turned up late to walk to school with her, and he could tear his trousers too if it would make her like him better."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Real Boy (The Got No Strings Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [timeheist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeheist/gifts), [theredjay](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=theredjay).
  * Inspired by [Raggedy Rory](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2091783) by [timeheist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeheist/pseuds/timeheist). 



Rory Williams is a real boy. Rory Williams has also spent his entire life in love with Amelia Pond, who lives in a world of dreams and stories and Raggedy Doctors, and when you are a small boy, or a teenage boy, or, really, even an adult, sometimes the reality of Amelia - sorry, Amy - can make the rest of reality a bit blurry.

But Rory is real. And he'd learned, early on, that no matter how much he loved Amelia - sorry, Amy - Pond, that he was a real boy, and that no matter how much he wished it, no matter how much he thought _she'd_ wished it, he couldn't be anything else. Rory is not a Raggedy Doctor. Rory's certainly not _the_ Doctor, who moves so far past blurry that he, the Doctor, is frequently, maddeningly, obscure. He, Rory, is pretty much what it says on the tin. 

He'd spent a long time, as a boy, as a teen, wishing he was anything but. Wishing he'd be the shining, exciting, dashing Raggedy Man, or at least his sidekick. Wishing Amy would turn around and see him. He'd spent a long time as a nurse fielding questions about women's work. He'd spent a long time dating Amy and feeling like she wasn't ever fully there.

He's good at practical. At details and fine points and questions. At trips to the store to replace whatever they've run out of, because whatever the Doctor said about the TARDIS and time and space and larders that are bigger on the inside, someone is always putting the milk back empty. He's good at care taking. It's not sexy. He knows it's not. He knows it makes him fuss and worry ask the questions no one else does. 

He knows it's never going to change. 

What he's only recently learned, is that he doesn't mind.

Rory Williams is a real boy. He asks real questions and he accepts reality for what it holds, even if what it holds is milennia of waiting outside a big square not-tomb. Even if those milennia are only memories, and only vaguely his. Even if what reality holds is his wife and daughter, lost somewhere in the universe, alone and unprotected, for all Amy - yes, Amy - is remarkably good at fending for herself. She shouldn't have to, not alone. He'll make sure she _> doesn't_ have to, even if he has to do it wearing the same armor he doesn't really remember wearing, waving the name of the Doctor before him. 

He's real. He's practical. He's good at care taking.

What he's only recently learned is the meaning of all these things. 

He, Rory Williams, is good at _taking care_. 

The Doctor and Amy and Melody - sorry, River - aren't good at taking care. Not at all. Not that they aren't good at caring. It's just that they're not good at caring _for_. And sometimes that leaves them vulnerable. And in the real world, sometimes vulnerable people get hurt.

And so Rory takes care. Fiercely. Sometimes fussily. Sometimes with inconvenient questions. Because someone has to. Because he's launched himself along with his family into a world where sometimes reality is fuzzy. He's learned not to mind fuzzy. But he'll always mind vulnerable. And take care of it as best he can.

Rory Williams is real. He knows it in his bones. And it's not a bad thing.


End file.
